Urbanhermes: Fashion Signaling and the
Social Mobility of Images
Christine M. Liu
MIT Media Laboratory
Sociable Media Group
cml@media.mit.edu
Judith S. Donath
MIT Media Laboratory
Sociable Media Group
judith@media.mit.edu
NOTE
FASHION SIGNALING
Submitted November, 2006 to Book on Accessories,
published by Terralannoo Publishers; edited by José
Teunissen and Jan Brand, of the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts,
Arnhem, Netherlands.
Most of what we want to know about each other is not
directly observable. Is she trustworthy? Is he kind? Do
you really like my cooking or are you just being polite?
Instead, we rely on signals, which are the perceivable
indicators of these hidden qualities of interest (Donath
forthcoming; Maynard Smith and Harper 2003).
INTRODUCTION
Fashion is a signal of status and affiliation in a world of
fluidly mutable social hierarchies. Social membership
defines access to information, including information about
new styles, new ways of dressing, thinking and being.
When information flows slowly and social structures are
relatively stable, fashion too changes slowly, over the
course of years. Today, information flows at the global
speed of the Internet, social structures are highly mobile,
and fashions change at an unprecedented rate. On the net,
hit songs and news stories are the fashions of the online
persona, the accessories of the blog and the homepage. On
the street, styles of shoes, handbags, coats and pants change
more rapidly than ever, but still far slower than their
electronic counterparts, weighed down by their material
incarnation.
Qualities can be almost anything: strength, honesty,
suitability for employment, etc. We rely on signals when
direct evaluation of the quality is too time consuming,
difficult or dangerous. A smile can be a frown of sadness, a
wedding ring a signal of being married, and a big house a
signal of wealth. Our language is full of signals, both the
words we say and the way we say them. Saying “yes, I
would like another helping of your tasty pasta” can be a
signal of hunger or of politeness and the accent with which
it is said can signal country of origin and social class.
Much of our communication, whether it is with words,
gestures, or displays of possessions, consists of signaling
information about who we are and what we are thinking.
Signals have varying degrees of reliability. Some are quite
reliable: upon seeing such a signal, one can be sure that the
quality is present. Lifting a 200 lb weight is a reliable
signal of strength; no matter how much a weaker person
wishes to signal strength, without actually possessing that
quality he or she will not be able to do so. Others signals
are less reliable: those who wish to give the impression of
having the quality, without actually possessing it can
imitate the signal. Most people who visit museums enjoy
looking at art, but some who find little aesthetic pleasure in
the experience go because they would like others to think
that they are of the sort who does.
The Urbanhermes project aims to bring the speed and
intelligence of electronic fashion to the physical world by
superimposing a connected and changeable medium onto
everyday street worn garments. In doing so, we hope not
only to unite the fashion worlds of online and urban but
also to elucidate what fashion signals reveal about our
technological culture.
Urbanhermes is a messenger bag designed to display and
disseminate meaningful yet ephemeral images among
people in the public realm. These images represent the
daily zeitgeist; fashions emerge, grow and wane in
popularity as knowledge diffuses. Wireless communication
allows users to pass images from bag to bag, and proximity
sensing adds awareness of others nearby who share similar
tastes.
Signals are reliable when it is prohibitively expensive to
signal dishonestly, but relatively cheap to do so honestly.
Seemingly wasteful expenditure of a resource, such as
energy, money or time, can reliably signal possession of
abundant amounts of it. For example, displaying skill at
something that took much time to master but that does not
yield any practical outcome, such as growing a garden of
bonsai trees, is a reliable signal that one has an abundance
of leisure time (Veblen 1899).
The goal of Urbanhermes is to enrich social interaction by
bringing electronic fashion signals to the physical world,
making it possible for people to express and observe richer,
subtler and more ephemeral social patterns
Fashion signals indicate affiliation and status in a fluidly
changing social world (Donath forthcoming). The form of
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the signal changes while its meaning – the social position it
indicates – remains the same. One must be able and willing
to continuously learn about and adapt to new forms in order
to keep signaling the same position. When information
flows slowly and social structures are stable, fashion
changes slowly.
Today, information moves at
unprecedented speed, social structures are highly
malleable—and fashions are in rapid flux. Fashions signal
information prowess: one knows what is next and is willing
to adopt it. The difficulty in accessing the information, of
sorting the good from the bad, is part of the cost that keeps
the signal reliable.
Urbanhermes is a system for signaling one’s access to
information through a dynamic fashion object. Designing a
usable, sustainable, and successful signaling system
requires integrating critical social costs as well as the
benefits that attract people to use it.
A SCENARIO
The day begins. Alana arises, makes coffee, and begins
browsing through her favorite news items, blog feeds, and
community postings on her computer. Her list includes both
relatively popular as well as niche items. She reads a bit,
and wirelessly transmits three images to her bag: a new
release’s album cover from an experimental music blog, an
image of a knitted Ferrari circulating around her crafting
community, and a photograph she took of Thom Yorke
while attending a Radiohead concert last night in the city.
Downloading images to her bag is one of Alana’s regular
rituals, like figuring which jeans to wear, as she assembles
her fresh images for the day. She sees it as having free reign
in an enormous, ever-changing networked wardrobe and
picking out what she will want to wear each morning.
Alana displays the album cover on her bag as default, with
the other two images stored invisibly within her accessory.
Alana heads out the door to work and waits for her ride at
the train station. After a minute or so spent waiting, Alana’s
bag vibrates gently to notify her that someone in shortrange is currently displaying an image that shares a
common source with one of Alana’s hidden images—the
crafting image. Alana has the option to switch her display
from the Radiohead photo to the Ferrari, but she first looks
around to see if she can see who is displaying the related
image. She soon recognizes it, noticing a guy sitting a few
seats away from her whose bag features another recent
image from the same mailing list. She quickly assesses his
character from other existing physical signals: his clothes,
hair, face, posture. He seems like an interesting, artsy,
innocuous stranger, so she changes her bag from the
Radiohead photo to the knitted Ferrari. As they board the
bus, her newly updated bag is visible to him. And to him,
she is no longer a complete strange, but a fellow member
in the same crafting community.
Once she arrives at work, Alana switches her display back
to the album cover. Grace, a curious co-worker Grace asks
Alana about the image on her bag. As Alana describes the
emerging artist, Grace is thrilled to learn about this
fascinating musician. Wishing to display it later at her
reading club that evening (and impress a record label
producer in attendance), Grace requests the image from
Alana. Alana agrees and transmits the image from her bag
to Grace’s. However, since Grace’s version is copy, its
quality degrades, an artefact of being second-degree from
the source. Even so, Grace is pleased to have her own copy
to display that day.
At lunch, Alana meets with her friend Hunter. As she says
hello, she changes her display to the Radiohead photo since
they went to the concert together. Since he had a fabulous
time at the concert, Hunter recognizes Alana’s photo
immediately. Hunter asks if he may acquire a copy of the
image for his collection, since he didn’t bring his camera
but he’d like his bag to display he was at the concert. She
agrees and transmits the photo to his bag. He thanks her for
the second-degree copy and dons it immediately.
Mid-afternoon, Hunter and Grace (who are unknown to
each other) happen to be getting tea at the same café.
Hunter wears the Thom Yorke photo while Grace has the
album cover. Both of their bags vibrate privately, notifying
each that someone in close proximity is displaying an
image that shares a common social link with one of their
own images. Specifically, both Hunter’s and Grace’s
images have ties to a common intermediary, Alana. Grace
doesn’t recognize the Thom Yorke photo, but Hunter
recognizes the album cover from Alana’s bag earlier that
day, so Hunter realizes that the woman in the café is
somehow socially connected to Alana. Through the
timeliness and meaningfulness of Grace’s image, Hunter
can infer more about Grace’s place in their larger social
milieu.
That evening, Alana attends a local live concert, and espies
another Urbanhermes bag in the crowd with an image of
Matthew Barney’s latest artistic work. Alana initiates
transmission of a copy of this image to her bag, and this
action creates an indelible link between her and this
Barney-knowing stranger.
After the show, Alana logs onto the Urbanhermes website
and reviews the trajectories of the images she was wearing
today. She notices that Grace shared the emerging artist’s
album cover with the record label producer, and the
consequential explosion in distribution after the producer
posted the image to his blog. Alana received a friendly emessage from Jenn (the stranger at the concert) who wrote
to anyone who adopted her image to unearth possible
fellow followers of Matthew Barney. As the images in
Alana’s collection are designed to expire after a certain
brief lifespan, she is prepared to replenish her accessory
with fresh images for the next day, or possibly the next
hour.
The time she spends acquiring new displays signals her
commitment to fashion; the content of the displays and the
trajectory of their adoption are signals of her affiliations
and her place in the social world.
a messenger bag, the form is generic to accommodate both
male and female users, and its dimensions and proportions
are appropriately balanced for most shapes and sizes. The
flap of fabric overlapping the front part of the bag is
designed to hold and secure the separate computational
component, with its screen and buttons visible and
accessible from the outside.
THE PHYSICAL FORM
Although the form factor of Urbanhermes could potentially
take many shapes (e.g. garment, jewelry, belt), we chose to
implement this prototype as a simple, practical messenger
bag. Unisex and minimal in design, it attempts to be
Additionally, an urban environment’s prevalence of on-foot
mobility give way to nomadic inclinations. A bag takes one
from one point to another, from home to work, from the
café to the library, a means of toting one’s daily necessities
on the body. The bag therefore becomes an extension of the
on-the-go existence, a natural and functional adapation that
befits the mobile culture.
CONCLUSION
Urbanhermes enables communication through the display
of rapidly evolving image vocabularies. As a technology, it
affords this cultural use, but it remains for the users to
embrace it and give it meaning. It is not the random
uploading of images that creates fashion, the signals of
affiliation and status, but the uploading of images that are
both novel and meaningful to the community. We believe
that the design of the system will foster its use to indicate
access to dynamically changing information and thus
establish a basis for impression formation.
Figure 1: Urbanhermes: an embodied fashion signaling
system. The prototype is constructed of felt and embedde with
a pair of networked mobile computers.
The boundaries between virtual and physical are dissolving.
We walk through urban spaces connected to distant
companions, mobile in our global communications.
Urbanhermes brings the speed, the malleability and the
traceability of virtual fashion signals to the physical street, a
melding that we believe will allow people to disclose and
perceive expressive qualities about themselves that would
not be possible by current material fashions.
accessible and attractive to people of all sexes, ages,
backgrounds, etc. We did not want distractions of style or
aesthetics to impede universal acceptance. Its use as an
accessory gives the wearer freedom to take it up or remove
it as desired (as opposed to a more integral article of
clothing, such as pants, which cannot be removed
unreservedly). This control also extends to the physicality
of the bag, whether it is worn facing in or out, styled to
contrast or complement the ensemble, or layered under or
over stratums of apparel.
REFERENCES
1. Donath, Judith. forthcoming. Signals, truth and design.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
The external bag is conventionally constructed, patterned
and sewn from colored felt. The felt was chosen as a
suitable material, as it is soft yet sturdy, playful yet
universal, and established a simplicity that belied its more
complex role as something more “futuristic.” Established as
2. Maynard Smith, John and David Harper. 2003. Animal
signals. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
3. Veblen, Thorstein. 1899. The theory of the leisure class.
New York: Macmillan.
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